unlocking the novel
a guide to modernism and postmodernism

Reader's autobiography: Dr. Linda Tate

Reading connects me to the people I love. “Reading as love” began with my mother. I’d read Charlotte’s Web to her as she cooked dinner, and as I got older, we’d swap books: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice. As an adult, I continue to bond with book friends. My college boyfriend and I loved Illusions. I still talk books with a summer romance from my Alaska days—Parker Palmer and Anne LaMott. In more recent years, a lover and I read Harry Potter aloud on winter nights as we snuggled under piles of quilts. In Madison, my roommate and I shared books voraciously—our apartment was strewn with novels by Willa Cather and Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich. When I moved to Shepherdstown, I met my friend Amy when she was a clerk at Four Seasons Books—she eavesdropped as my friends and I called out favorite authors. Amy and I have shared Faith Ringgold’s children’s books, devoured Barbara Kingsolver’s writing (even going to a D.C. Kingsolver appearance in a hot July when Amy was one week from childbirth), recited Billy Collins poems over bottles of Merlot, joined her children in their reading adventures. In my years at Shepherd, I’ve shared book after book after book with students who have also become book friends. These days, my best friend Jennifer and I have a codependent relationship: we are both confirmed biblioholics. We comb bookstores till we collapsed with dehydration, call each other long distance to read a perfect sentence, own books together—some live in her “big house on the prairie” in South Dakota, some in my 1802 Shepherdstown house. Now, a new friend and I are creating the masterpiece of friendship, as we call it. We’ll soon take our first vacation together, with tons of books and our journals stashed in my car. He’ll read to me as I drive; I’ll read to him as we stop at authors’ homes along the way. My house, my life, my friendships are wild with books—books spilling out willy nilly everywhere and anywhere. I love books—and I love my book friends.